In Joel Hopkins’ awkwardly lovely Last Chance
Harvey, Dustin Hoffman is Harvey Shine, a music composer who’s on
his last legs at work as he heads to England for his daughter Susan’s
(Liane Balaban) wedding. Upon arrival, he endures a series of
injustices that make a mockery of that last name—little things like
hotel blinds that won’t open, wrinkled suits with security tags still
stuck in them, awkward conversations with his ex (Kathy Baker) and her
husband (James Brolin).
“Dustin and I had a long talk about the backstory,” says Balaban, on
the phone from a storm-paralyzed Toronto a week before Christmas. “We
had this idea that the parents got divorced, and Harvey was absent and
Harvey was embarrassed. He felt like an outcast. He says in the film
that he always felt like a bit of a disappointment, which is his own
neuroses, not something that’s necessarily true. And that led him to
become estranged from his family and his daughter.”
His awkwardness and alienation emerges in short succession at a
pre-wedding dinner organized by Susan’s friends and mother. When Harvey
suddenly tells Susan that he won’t be staying for the reception, she
hands aisle-walking rights over to her stepfather.
“‘I’m hearing the same old story, he’s not going to be able to stay
for the whole wedding,'” Balaban says, theorizing her character’s
motivation. “She gives him one last chance, last chance Harvey, and he
says he can’t stay for the reception and she decides to break it to him
then and there.”
Back at the airport, Harvey meets Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), a
similarly beaten-down single person, and over the remains of the day
they forge a promising, fumbling romance, like Before Sunrise for the boomer set. The film is shot on location all over London,
though Balaban’s handful of scenes—the movie is essentially a
two-hander—take place exclusively indoors.
“I did some fun things, I went to the National Portrait Gallery. I
saw a Turner exhibit at the Tate,” she says. “It was my first time in
London since I was seven. I remember the punks in Piccadilly Circus and
my father paid them to take my picture. And I bought my first cassette,
Michael Jackson’s Bad.”
Toronto native Balaban, who has been living in Montreal since
attending Concordia to study political science, was cast in her first
film—and first lead—in her last year of high school, a role that’s
close to the hearts of many in these parts: Moonie Pottie in the Cape
Breton coming-of-age drama New Waterford Girl, which also
starred a then-unknown Tara Spencer-Nairn (Corner Gas).
“My mother’s first husband is from New Waterford and my mother had
honeymooned in New Waterford and showed me letters she had written her
sister,” Balaban says. “I thought it was incredibly beautiful and that
there was something tragic about it that added to its beauty. I came
from North York and felt alienated there, and realized how urban I
was.”
The film was a critical favourite, had a decent theatrical run in
Canada, ran the festival gauntlet and, says Balaban, “changed the
course of my future. I wanted to be a journalist. But for the first few
years after university I kept working as an actor, because it had
become a good livelihood for me. I came to the point where I realized I
had to be 100-percent committed if I had to keep going. And I realized
I loved acting and that I wanted to do this for years to come.”
Her credits span more than two dozen films and series, including
Saint Jude, World Traveler, Seven Times Lucky and
2008 festival highlight One Week, with a half-a-dozen projects
in pre- or post-production. But for now, as she gets word that her
flight home has been cancelled until the following day, she’s focused
on Last Chance Harvey.
“For me it’s about how it’s never too late to have the life that you
want,” she says, slowly and deliberately. “It’s never too late to do
the things that you want: fall in love, make things right, forgive and
be forgiven.”
Last Chance Harvey opens Friday,
January 16. See Movie Times for screening info.
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2009.